The occurrence of incidental soils on fabric articles is a fact of life. If these soils cannot be removed from the fabric article, the article cannot be used again for its intended purpose because of its “dirty” appearance. The result is loss of use of an otherwise wearable garment, which is undesirable to the consumer because of the financial loss as well as the emotional attachment that some wearers have with clothing articles.
In the home, conventional laundry cleaning is carried out with relatively large amounts of water, typically in a washing machine at the consumer's home, or in a dedicated place such as a coin laundry. Although washing machines and laundry detergents have become quite sophisticated, the conventional laundry process still fails to remove some soils from fabric articles. A wide variety of “pre-treatment” compositions and devices are available to the consumer to assist in soil removal. These compositions often comprise enzymes, bleaching agents and surfactants and require a subsequent aqueous wash to complete soil removal. While effective in cleaning the soil, exposure of the fabric articles to high levels of water in the subsequent wash creates a risk of dye transfer and shrinkage. Moreover, a significant portion of fabric articles used by consumers is not suitable for cleaning in a conventional laundry process. Even fabric articles that are considered “washing machine safe” frequently come out of the laundry process badly wrinkled and require ironing, and may exhibit color loss.
More recently, home dry-cleaning kits have become available to the consumer. Some of these kits provide a means of treating incidental soils. However, these compositions comprise water and as such must be tested on fabric articles in an inconspicuous area prior to use, so as to ensure no fabric damage occurs (color bleeding, discoloration, residue formation, localized shrinkage, rings and the like).
Additionally, the consumer may desire to remove the incidental soil while still wearing the article, or just prior to re-wearing the article without subsequent treatment. Existing domestic pre-treatment systems can leave undesirable residues on clothing articles, even after an extended period of drying, and may visibly spread the soil over a larger area, creating rings around the original soil. These visible residues may leave the fabric article unusable without subsequent treatment, i.e. washing.
Accordingly there is an unmet need for compositions and methods for spot removal of soils from fabric articles which are safe for use in the home, safe for use on a wide range of fabric types including those sensitive to water, and which do not require subsequent conventional washing.
In contrast, commercial dry cleaning processes rely on non-aqueous solvents for cleaning. By avoiding water, these processes minimize the risk of shrinkage and wrinkling, however, cleaning of soils, particularly water-based and alcohol-based soils, is very limited with these processes. Typically, the dry-cleaner removes such soils manually prior to the dry-cleaning process. These methods are complex, requiring a wide range of compositions to address the variety of soils encountered, very labor intensive and often result in some localized damage to the treated article despite careful handling by the operator. Further complicating the process is the need to rinse or “level” the spot-treat fluid from the fabric article with solvent to avoid contaminating the non-aqueous fluid in the dry-cleaning machine with the spot-treatment chemicals.
Accordingly, there is also an unmet need in the dry-cleaning industry for cleaning compositions and methods that are simple to use, safe for use on dry-cleanable fabric articles, effective on a wide range of soils and which to not require additional treatment steps prior to the dry-cleaning operation.